Thursday, April 5, 2018

City of Florence Is Now In The Painting Business?,.....

It's bad enough we have to compete against other painters that don't do things the right way by having a city license and insurance, (the city of Florence does not enforce this) but now we have to compete against the city too?,...

Recently a wall at the vacant lot where the old Sears building stood got defaced by taggers depicting their thoughts apparently on school shootings blaming President Trump. The first words I saw were, "Its their first amendment rights to do so",... well no it isn't. It wasn't their property and they vandalized the property on Tennessee St. You just can't go around putting your thoughts on other peoples walls.

Now, the city went and covered it up. They painted over it. So is the property owner going to reimburse the city for materials and labor? Or is the city just going to donate the paint and labor to make a new canvas for the next tagger? So if it is the latter, that means that the people of Florence paid for the new canvas to be applied. And just how did this wall get tagged without anyone noticing? Tennessee St is a busy place and once you are in the grassy area, there is no where to hide? One would think a police cruiser would have gone through there at some point.

But wait,.... theres more. The police chief said "if someone wants to paint graffiti on a public wall, that
person could contact city officials and they could discuss finding a wall in
town." TimesFaily Article

Hmmmm,... really? I primed a side of a wall in North Florence so that a mural could be applied to that wall. The city,.... The same city that is offering to help find a wall for these taggers to do their work on,... The same city made the owner of the building get a sign permit which halted work for a while. The permit is free but it slowed down progress on this particular job.

You are absolutely right on the point of the city covering this graffiti up. It was political speech, some liked it, some didn't. Like the message or not, this "tagger" is an artist. But if this wall which has been used for multiple "tags" is on private property it should have been up to the property owner to contract a painter to cover the mural and it should be up to the owner to post a PRIVATE PROPERTY NO TRESPASSING sign. If the owner wants murals, political or not, on their property THEY are responsible, not the city and certainly not the taxpayers. Will SOMEBODY bring this up at the next Florence City Council meeting? Perhaps and most certainly will get filed in the Chapter 13 drawer like everything else that is brought up but the publicity needs to be out there and we certainly can't count on the local "newspaper" to inform the public. BTW, just how many times should we "vote em all out" until we get some competent councilmen in? Thanks for the blog post OB.